Three gang members were handed life federal prison sentences Friday for participating in a racketeering conspiracy responsible for a botched hit on a MacArthur Park-area street vendor that left an infant dead.
Eduardo Hernandez and twin brothers Vladimir and Leonidas Iraheta were found guilty in May 2012 of racketeering conspiracy and drug distribution charges stemming from an operation spanning a decade of extortion, intimidation, money laundering, drug dealing and murder within a warren of hardscrabble streets close to downtown Los Angeles.
“The level of havoc in this community was just horrendous,” U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson said. “It was like a war zone. I just think these communities have the right to exist … without this level of mayhem.”
“This enterprise took its intimidation and control … very, very seriously,” Pregerson said. “This kind of violence isn’t business as usual.”
The infant was mistakenly shot and killed by a Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang member during a haphazard attempt to kill a street vendor in October 2007, prosecutors said.
The baby’s killing triggered a federal crackdown on the gang, which prosecutors described as one of the most ruthless and lucrative cliques of the 18th Street gang. More than three dozen members or associates of the Columbia organization were indicted in Los Angeles federal court.
Between 2000 and 2007, the gang sold an estimated 184 kilograms — more than 400 pounds — of crack cocaine, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Lally said.
Attorneys for the defendants sentenced today argued that prosecutors relied too heavily on cooperating witnesses, who testified against their clients in exchange for the promise of lighter sentences.
However, Pregerson said the weight of the evidence proved Hernandez and the Iraheta brothers deserved life sentences.
The defendants “are associated with a lot of bad things,” the judge said.
In an angry statement to the court, Vladimir Iraheta blasted the prosecution for “fabrication of evidence.”
“I don’t think it’s fair that I have to spend the rest of my life in prison for something that shouldn’t have gotten this far,” he said.
During the two-month trial, prosecutors painted a picture of a disorganized street gang which took in tens of thousand of dollars a week in drug sales at various drug spots near MacArthur Park, but was ultimately beholden to a member of the Mexican Mafia serving a life sentence in Colorado.
“This is a case not about any particular crime or person,” Lally told the jury during closing arguments. “It’s about a criminal organization and the ones who do its bidding.”
Cooperating witnesses included a former gang shot-caller, a onetime defense attorney who had been “turned” by gang members into a partner in a $1 million money laundering operation, the targeted street vendor, wives and ex- girlfriends.
The defense repeatedly warned the jury to reject prosecution testimony from informants who each had “an ax to grind” with the defendants.
None of the defendants took the stand in their own defense.
In his summation, defense attorney Michael R. Belter said the government had succeeded only in “setting up a story” and because the defendants appear to be “bad guys, the government wants you to fill in the final chapter – – without any evidence.”
In his closing, Lally said the Iraheta twins and Hernandez were pocketing thousands of dollars a week extorting the street vendors in the downtown area for “rent payments.”
“If you were involved in the rent collections you were squarely in the middle of the enterprise,” the prosecutor said.
In asking the jury to find the men guilty of all charges, Lally explained that any acts charged in the racketeering indictment can be attributed to all those named.
“Is tagging part of the enterprise? You bet,” Lally said.
— City News Service